By The Sea (2015)

Set in the 1970s, a writer (Brad Pitt) with writers block and his depressed pill taking wife (Angelina Jolie) travel to a small coastal town in France, ostensibly for inspiration for his fiction. But unspoken, it seems just as likely an attempt to save their crumbling marriage. Written, directed and starring Jolie, when BY THE SEA was released last November in the U.S., the reviews were savage and the box office nil. I think they missed the boat. Is a great movie? No, the seams (which threaten to unravel at any given moment) are too obvious for that. But what I love about the film is its ambitious integrity however derivative. This is the kind of personal film making that harkens back to the European films of the 1960s specifically Antonioni (Jolie is even done up like Monica Vitti although she looks more like Sophia Loren) and the indie American films of the 1970s specifically John Cassavetes (Jolie has gone on record that he was an inspiration). This is a film about something! Jolie as a director is specific and methodical and the film's languid pace allows for a detailed character study although it's not hard to guess what the source of their problem is. If ultimately it's not a success (I won't call it a failure), one has to admire Jolie who at this stage of her career can probably do anything she wants to try something daunting and challenging and not signing up for some big action movie franchise to fatten her bank account. With Melanie Laurent, Niels Arestrup, Richard Bohringer and Melvil Poupaud.